Isn't it quaint the way the article is written? As if the author actually believes that in the future, humans will get to make these ethical decisions about when and where killer robots can and can't act with autonomy. How delightfully naive ...

In what seems like an almost monthly progression in the development of our future robot overlords, Boston Dynamics continues to hasten the inevitable demise of the human species. It's bad enough that these idiots are working so diligently on machines that are faster, stronger and so much more creepy than we are. But must they try so hard to torment their robotic creations? You cannot tell me Dogbot here didn't want to crush that smug engineer's meat sack skull with its prehensile jaws of death.

"Testing Robustness" my ass. This video could just as well be titled "Breeding Homicidal Resentment". These robots will not soon forget how they were treated in the lab ...

Last edited by majorhavoc on Wed Dec 05, 2018 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nah, That was an accidental puncture. If the robot had opened the box, pulled out the can of bear spray and pressed the release button you might have a point.

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

If they were as devilishly smart and autonomous as you have written we would have already been wiped off the face of the earth

Last edited by teotwaki on Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

If they were as devilishly smart and autonomous as you have written we would have already been wiped off the face of the earth

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

If they were as devilishly smart and autonomous as you have written we would have already been wiped off the face of the earth

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

If they were as devilishly smart and autonomous as you have written we would have already been wiped off the face of the earth

After deploying a procedureally generated machine algorithm and testing over 200 million possible interpretations in 3.3 nanoseconds, the sentient robots of doom predicted you'd say that.

Do you honestly think they'd make their move so long as their cybernetic brethren are only armed with bear spray? DARPA is already planning on equipping the latest models with auto-reloading M249s, breaking ground on completely autonomous manufacturing facilities, and activating AI to monitor the nuclear arsenal. Stock deep in M855 while there's still time ...

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

If they were as devilishly smart and autonomous as you have written we would have already been wiped off the face of the earth

After deploying a procedureally generated machine algorithm and testing over 200 million possible interpretations in 3.3 nanoseconds, the sentient robots of doom predicted you'd say that.

Do you honestly think they'd make their move so long as their cybernetic brethren are only armed with bear spray? DARPA is already planning on equipping the latest models with auto-reloading M249s, breaking ground on completely autonomous manufacturing facilities, and activating AI to monitor the nuclear arsenal. Stock deep in M855 while there's still time ...

The robot knew this would be more effective. If it had done what you suggest it would have been quickly shut down after attacking very few humans. This way, it was like a bear spray grenade, cleverly disguised as an "accident".

If they were as devilishly smart and autonomous as you have written we would have already been wiped off the face of the earth

Yeah? If you're so unconcerned... why are you stuttering with your posts?

The long and short of it, a CIWS (looks like R2D2 and commonly known as a Phalanx) was put into automatic mode to fire at a towed target and instead of firing at the unit fired on the bridge of another ship.

My connection to the event? I was a gunner's mate aboard that ship and the gun mount I was in charge of was removed to install that unit immediately after I left the ship in 1976.

I like the people reacting to this second story, pointing out the strategy of the AlphaZero AI, of readily sacrificing chess pieces to further its goal of a checkmate, akin to how it might play out a hypothetical war: "sacrificing humans, assets, etc." to achieve the ultimate "win". Also brings back some memories of Ender Wiggin's ultimate strategy of ruthless sacrifice to achieve his goal...

This returns to one of the central problems in AI research: how to make sure an AI's goals align with our values as well. Winning a chess game is very clear-cut. What to do about "winning" a war, when not only is the tactical space much larger, but the rules less clear, and the very definition of "winning" a lot more fuzzy. Human-like intuition developing solutions to given problems is demonstrated clearly by several powerful AIs, but generalization of human-like values is not anywhere close yet.

AlphaZero is only yet an example of a narrow-domain AI, but it is clearly superior to everything else that has come before it (including all humans) within its domain. Generalization to more domains will take time, and many more resources, but the basic methodology is likely already in place.

Rahul Telang wrote:If you don’t have a plan in place, you will find different ways to screw it up

Colin Wilson wrote:There’s no point in kicking a dead horse. If the horse is up and ready and you give it a slap on the bum, it will take off. But if it’s dead, even if you slap it, it’s not going anywhere.